This talk was recorded at the Institute for Critical Animal Studies Oceania 2015 Conference in Melbourne. You can find out more information about this conference here: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/conference-schedule/

You can find links to listen to other talks from the conference here: http://progressivepodcastaustralia.com/2015/08/14/108/

This recording is thanks to Kate from Freedom of Species: http://www.freedomofspecies.org/

Below is further information about the talk from the conference booklet, available here: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-booklet-final-.pdf

“Do Gay People Even Eat Fast Food?” Queering animal liberation (animalizing

queer?)

JESSICA ISON

In this paper I will critique the normalization of queerness at the expense of

nonhuman animals. Firstly, I will outline the relevant historical narratives

relating to animal and queer liberation. Following this, I will focus on the

current ways in which queers are painted within a sterile, acceptable construct

in order to prove legitimacy for certain causes such as gay marriage or gays in

the military.

One way this normalization is also achieved is through queer people

exploiting animals. This papers central example of this will be the Burger King

Proud Whopper advertisement. I will discuss how its use of homonormativity

and the pink dollar, imbibed in a flesh eating pride celebration, is a crucial

moment in the sterilization of queerness. Further, the desire for animal flesh is

constructed as queer and thus normalized in the advertisement. By using

Pride rhetoric to sell their product, the advertisement reflects a larger issue of

the consumption of mainstream gay and lesbian lives.

This paper lastly situates the advertisement as a critical moment in the move

towards a palatable normative politic. Ultimately, this will be a call for queer

anti-speciesist activism that is not reliant on pretenses of happy meat and

queer normativity.

Jessica Ison is the Representative for ICAS in Oceania. She is a PhD

candidate at La Trobe University and the Chair of the Gender and

Sexuality Intersectional Research Collaborative. Jess is also a tutor at

RMIT in Criminology and Legal Studies. In her spare time she can be

found ranting about prison abolition and fermentation.

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews